What do people outside the U.S. associate with Detroit?

A photo of Downtown Stockholm, Sweden taken by Dan Gilmartin, executive director of the Michigan Municipal League during the United Nations Future of Places convention in June 2013.(Handout | Dan Gilmartin)

DETROIT, MI -- They didn't immediately ask about cars or Motown.

The first thing they thought of when it came to Detroit wasn't gun violence or bankruptcy.

It was another topic entirely that was repeatedly brought to Detroit's representatives in an international gathering of some 250 architects, urban planners, politicians and activists from around the world:

Techno music.

"The first place they wanted to go was about that aspect of the city of Detroit," said Dan Gilmartin about a recent trip to Stockholm, Sweden for the United Nations' Future of Places conference.

Gilmartin, executive director of the Michigan Municipal League, was there to talk about local efforts at placemaking -- strategic investment and policy activity aimed at turning locations into places where people want to be.

But what people immediately wanted to know about when they approached the team from Michigan was the Movement Electronic Music Festival, the annual Memorial Day weekend techno extravaganza held at Hart Plaza in the city where the genre was founded.

Gilmartin said it showed that perceptions of Detroit around the world differ from the often-negative impressions of the city widely held in the U.S.

"Overseas, people tend to be a lot more sensitive to what's happened," he said.
"The de-industrialization in Detroit and other places... they see it as a cycle. It's not necessarily a death knell for a city."

The Michigan Municipal League has put together 25 case studies on compelling grassroots placemaking efforts like the Clark Park Coalition, which, despite Detroit's diminished recreational funding, created one of the nation’s only free inner-city hockey programs, and the Dequindre Cut, which turned an abandoned rail line into a popular bike and pedestrian trail.

Gilmartin said the items that garnered the most intrigue at the international conference were "do-it-yourself" efforts in Detroit and Flint, like organized neighborhood radio patrols that try to fill in gaps left by shorthanded police forces.

Detroit Soup, a monthly public dinner gathering where people vote to fund arts and community projects, was another favorite in Stockholm, Gilmartin said.

"Many communities in Michigan and many groups have been putting a lot of effort and energy behind trying to reinvent our communities in a way that's much more resilient in the 21st century," he said.

"It's sort of everybody doing there part... Detroit Soup was something that people found very exciting. It's very replicable in many places."

He said that type of do-it-yourself energy and ground-level entrepreneurial spirit can only be found in places like Detroit and Flint.

"That stuff happens where its sort of a change in DNA," Gilmartin said. "... People are very interested, genuinely interested in sort of this rebirth issue.